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Born Free: A Response

By Michael Boylan June 7, 2011 1:47 pmJune 7, 2011 1:47 pm

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

I am glad that my article, “Are There Natural Human Rights?” prompted nearly 300 responses. Though a few playfully sang the tune of Molière and Aristophanes concerning the utility of philosophers in the public square, most took the claims made in the article seriously and offered comments, suggestions and critiques. I would like to briefly respond to four groups of comments: (a) questions about God, (b) the role of science, (c) Confucius, and (d) operative rights.

By far the largest group of comments centered around issues concerning God and the existence of ontological objects. Even though my essay never mentions God, much less grounding the argument upon belief in God, it is true that the argument assumes the existence of at least one set of ontological objects—namely human rights. “Ontology” is a philosophy term that talks about what exists and in what mode it exists. Abstract entities exist in a different mode than do every day empirical objects, like rocks. The existence of the particular abstract object set — natural human rights — in my essay is assumed mainly because the general format of this series is not well-suited for a longer technical treatment. Those readers who want to explore this further can turn to my book, “A Just Society,” (chapter 3) or Gewirth’s “Reason and Morality” (chapter 3). My essay does not require the existence of any other abstract ontological object.

There are, of course, philosophers who vigorously argue against abstract moral ontological objects—such as Hilary Putnam, in “Ethics Without Ontology.”Putnam’s sensibility undergirds the conventionalists mentioned in my article. If the objects that ethics studies are real (what I have been calling “natural”), then these can be discovered and act as a foundation for universalism. This is the position I was defending in the essay.

Another issue that was raised by many concerns the role of science and evolution in explaining human behavior (including morality and human rights). This scientific approach began most recently with E.O. Wilson’s “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis” (1971) and Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene” (1976). These books and others that came after set forth a biological determinism: agents act according to biological programs and not because they engage in deliberation and free choice. For example, human males are more promiscuous than females because it is a more efficient reproductive strategy to get their genes into the next generation. For males, impregnating many women would better insure this. For women, being more selective and getting help in rearing the children will better promote her genes into the next generation. Promoting one’s genes into the next generation is an imperative of evolutionary theory, ergo; evolutionary theory can explain sexual mores!

Under the extreme form of this hypothesis of biological determinism, all human behavior (including the respect for human rights) can be explained via a game theory scenario that has evolutionary theory as its game rules. Under this account, ethical theories that use the word “natural” to mean anything other than evolutionary biology are delusions or fantasies.

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The other extreme that counters biological determinism is radical libertarianism (not to be confused with political libertarianism). Under this account people are entirely free to act as they decide to act. The will is more powerful than the body and thus there is an absolute moral responsibility for everything that we do. Plato, Sartre, and C.A. Campbell were prominent proponents of this position. Libertarians can believe or disbelieve in abstract ontological objects, therefore; they can support natural human rights or conventional human rights. Their contribution to the discussion is that they believe that the choice lies within the agent and it is a real choice, contra the biological determinists.

There is a middle position here and it is called “compatibilism.” Under this account there is an interaction between the poles that ends up toward one side or the other with both being given some consideration. The result is a hybrid of sorts. Walter Stace and Peter van Inwagen have written careful explorations of this standpoint.

Extreme biological determinism would falsify natural human rights. Either libertarianism or compatibilism could support natural human rights (so long as they also supported one set of ontological objects).

The third category of interest was how to evaluate Confucius’ virtue ethics. Several people noted that Confucius supported a version of the Golden Rule (which I set out as an example of a theoretical principle as opposed to a constructed convention). This is correct, but the role of the Golden Rule is not the driving foundational force behind Confucian ethics. The Golden Rule (in a slightly different form) is superseded by a virtue ethics approach as a descriptor of his ethical system. Like Aristotle, Confucius promotes the cultivation of select virtues as being foundational to morality. But where do these virtues come from? How can one choose between virtues in an hierarchical ordering? For example, what if two virtues conflict such as justice and loyalty? To what can one turn for adjudication? For Confucius (like Aristotle) the answer is the community. And where does the community turn to in order to justify its choices? Tradition. This is social construction by a group of people over time that occurs not according to timeless ontological objects but by the happenstance of cultural expression. I discuss this dynamic in “Basic Ethics” (2009). Thus, I stand by my assessment of Confucius and his current historical interpretation by the Peoples Republic of China.

The last area I want to address is operative rights. The operative rights position is one that holds there are no natural human rights. Human rights are legal artifacts. They only become “operative” when a legislative authority (an individual or a group) says they are. This sort of position was very popular with a number of readers. I think that this is due to the American tendency toward pragmatism as a cornerstone of personal worldview. It also coincides with the History of the United States that set out one of the first (if not the first) codified legal guarantees of human rights in the first ten amendments of the United States’ Constitution (the Bill of Rights). These two facts drove several readers to embrace this position of constructed operative rights. I’m not really sure that they did this against natural human rights (embraced by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence) but rather it was against the notion of “abstract” rights against concrete, legal, observable rights that citizens can go to court to protect.

Thus, the terms of discourse have changed from whether there are natural human rights to whether it is useful to think about abstract rights (be they natural or culturally constructed) as opposed to only considering operative rights. For these readers debates about women’s right to vote in the United States before the 19th amendment was passed in 1920 was not about whether there was an abstract right that women possessed (based upon one set of abstract ontological objects) that was wrongly ignored in the society but which women possessed regardless of it being recognized (thus revealing a legal structure that was not in step with morality). But rather women’s suffrage was about political groups appealing to the rules of political power dynamics (including alliances with the temperance movement) in order to get their way: a “might makes right” dynamic. The operative rights perspective is all about persuasion. If I can persuade you that X is a right, then and only then is it. This is the essence of social construction. And though I appreciate that it is an historic moment when natural human rights are “recognized,” I do not believe that “recognized” equals “exist.” For me the public recognition of a right is different from the ontological status of that right. Some public recognition can be wrong—such as the “rule of thumb” that supposedly allowed husbands to beat their wives with sticks no thicker than their thumbs.

Operational rights describe the policy on the ground. But these policies can be flawed. What we need instead are natural human rights that are universal over time and space to correct corrupt regimes and help decent societies to become better.

Michael Boylan is a professor of philosophy at Marymount University in Arlington, Va., and was a fellow at The Center for American Progress in Washington, from 2007 to 2009. His major theoretical work on these issues is “A Just Society”(2004). His most recent book is “Morality and Global Justice: Justifications and Applications” (2011).

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The Stone features the writing of contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. The series moderator is Simon Critchley. He teaches philosophy at The New School for Social Research in New York. To contact the editors of The Stone, send an e-mail to opinionator@nytimes.com. Please include “The Stone” in the subject field.